Pajero

Back in the early 90’s we had a neighbour who used to work for Kenya Breweries Ltd. He was a big surly chap with a grisly beard that covered half his face. He had two hot daughters; daughters who were always locked behind their gate – school, home. Home, school. Hot, miserable chicks that were cut off from the 90s musical pop culture of exchanging tapes of Immature, Shai, Naughty by Nature, Da Brat and Toni Braxton. Oh, Toni. Sigh.

This chap didn’t take shit from anybody. He never said hallo, even to the other parents in the estate. He wasn’t respected, he was feared. He was the kind of chap you were sure would beat up your dad.  He hardly said a word, but when miraculously he did speak, you were never sure, because you couldn’t really see his mouth move. All you heard was a muffled human voice, emanating somewhere from the bushy depths of that beard. And before you understood that indeed you had been spoken to, he had already walked away. No time for deaf kids.

Then there was his wife, this tall willowy woman with long lethargic strides, her gaze always fixed at the ground as she trudged along. You got the feeling she was beautiful once, that she was capable of smiling, but marrying that man had changed everything for her. It seemed to me that she wasn’t living, but merely tolerating life. That man ran a concentration camp, not a family. Mean-ass nigga. Cold as a fish. We used to call him Undertaker.

At some point I remember him getting the famous Golden Handshake and buying a Pajero. You remember those first generation Pajeros that looked like something cut from Kisii soapstone? Yes, those ones. Ugliest car I ever saw, and I hadn’t seen many. That Pajero always looked like it was stifling a sneeze, with its shoulders frozen in that stance. But it was the only 4X4 in the estate. Undertaker showed our fathers that clean chins didn’t mean shit if you drove a car like my father’s, a Peugeot 404, a car that looked like an anaemic patient at the front and a mudfish from behind. Undertaker was the man with the big beard and a big car. Eat that, suckers!

For once Undertaker showed that he was capable of nurturing something, because he would spend hours washing that car, polishing it, removing its mats, airing it. Every morning he would spend several minutes just revving that bad-boy up, as if to remind the whole estate that he was The Man. And on Sundays, he would bundle the whole family in the car for church, those hot daughters peering meekly from the back seat window, with eyes that pleaded, “Save us, Bikozulu, save us.”

That sums up my memory of a Pajero; The Undertaker, his wife who looked like a cast member of the Walking Dead and his miserable daughters, about whom I feel guilty for not having saved from the jaws of tyranny. Do you know what’s really odd? That the Pajero actually means “wanker” in Spanish, a word that would have perfectly fit the mean spirited chap.

But still, that car did little for me. I didn’t see it and say, “When I grow up I want to drive a Kisii soapstone.”

So when Simba Colt recently said, “Biko, we will give you our new Pajero Sport to test drive for a week, tell us what you think,” I wasn’t too enthused. It was only going to end up opening old wounds, old memories, old failures and old limitations. For the first time in many years I wondered what happened to those girls’ mom. And if she’s OK. If you are reading this mama Sally, I hope you are well. I hope you escaped.

That childhood experience ruined Pajeros for me. But I said sawa, out of curiosity. So one Friday I rocked up at Simba Colt, and Stella from Marketing handed over the keys to the car that thankfully looked nothing like Undertaker’s car. They didn’t even look related. It’s amazing what over 20-years of technology and innovation can do to a car.

First off, it didn’t look anything like soapstone. Secondly, it had a large ass. No seriously. From behind, the Pajero Sport looks like it’s a socialite. Google it if you think I am kidding. If you took a picture of the Pajero Sports’ rear and Instagramed it, it would get more ‘likes’ than the picture of…naah, I can’t say that without folk here catching feelings.

That car has a big ass, which made me warm up to it immediately. Don’t judge me. But mostly it looked functional and sturdy. It looked like a car that would do your bidding, no questions asked.

I’m not a petrol-head. I can’t even write “torque” without Word reminding me that it’s not the right spelling. 16” ventilated drum-in-discs? What are those? I don’t know the nitty-gritties of a car’s engine. Listen, I once went to SA for a Land Rover launch with petrol-heads like Trevor from Auto-Vault and Baraza from Nation and these chaps were talking engine language that I just couldn’t wrap my head around. I remember sitting there thinking, “Shit, Zulu, you are out of your depth here, what are you going to write about apart from the colour of these cars?”

Then I realised a car, for me, isn’t about the nuts and bolts but what it makes me feel. What it represents. I mean, does the car speak my language? Does its mechanical ethos reflect well on my large forehead? Sure it moves, but does it move to where I want to go as a man, not as a passenger? Is this car a mirror of the things I believe in? If there were ten cars lined up in a parking lot, would a complete stranger who just met me walk up to the car and say, “I think this is your car?”

Here is what I really liked about the Pajero Sport, apart from its domineering size and large ass. I liked the fact that sitting inside, you felt there is nowhere it wouldn’t go. Nothing it wouldn’t do. It was game. Down for whatever. Just say the word. I didn’t map our route in my head because I knew it would handle any road. It picked when I wanted it to pick. And when I pressed my foot on the accelerator, the 2.5liter engine didn’t hesitate to move. It urged me on.

There are a whole bunch of Subaru guys in this town, portly chaps with striped polo shirts, who think they run the roads. I have always said that life is too short to race a Subaru driver. What’s the use when you will find them at the bar waiting to order anyway? So I normally let them go. But driving this car, something in me just wanted to test these chaps. It’s like the car was stoking my fire. A few beat me. Most, especially on Waiyaki Way, I left behind like dust, their engines screaming like asthmatic gravediggers. When the Pajero Sport picks, you feel it under your foot. Like it’s trying not to leave you behind. And because it’s a heavy car, it gives you that sense of invincibility, that you are protected. That it’s got you.

Then came the matatus. Matatus feared me. I would bully them around. There is no such joy as seeing that hint of indecision in the matatu guy’s eyes when he looks at your car. Because on our roads, the undecided get devoured. It’s a mind game. But with the Pajero Sport I disengaged my mind and let the car’s bullish persona do the rest. Most matatus gave way.

Over the weekend I asked my boy, Lewis – incidentally a Subaru driver – to accompany me off road in Isinya. Let me put it this way. Do you have those friends who claim to be down-to-earth and yet twist their noses on a stopover at Kikopei, looking at the meat like they will get Ebola from it? Those friends who say something so snobbish and pretentious, you stop to wonder what exactly you guys have in common? The Pajero Sport isn’t like that friend. It’s the car that is down for any plan.

The Sport is the car I was not embarrassed to step out from. Image is everything. Sometimes you borrow a friend’s car when yours is down, and you really are grateful, but it’s such a shell that when you go to a building you ask the watchies, “Iko parking kwa basement?” Because the meeting you are going for is one of those “image meetings.” You know them? The ones that give you a job based on how you present yourself not your substance. The Pajero Sport is a car you will not hide in a basement. It has presence. It’s got this fearlessness. It says, I’m a city chap, but I will get off this road in a heartbeat if the occasion calls for it. They call it new generation SUV thinking.

Because kids have that raw honesty, I asked Tamms what she thought of it.

“It’s like kina Ken’s car.” She said softly, surveying its interior as I dropped her off to school.

“Who is Ken?” I asked jealously.

“Kyle’s friend.”

“Do you like it?”

“I don’t like Kyle.” (Something we have in common)

“No, the car.”

“Yes. It’s nice. Is it ours?”

“No, it’s for my friend.”

Then she looked at me. The look that said, “How did I not end up as his friend’s daughter?”

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